OBEDIENCE

Trust in God's promises comes to light in obedience to his commands… It is therefore a contradiction in terms to say that we acknowledge Christ's rule in our lives if we do not submit to his word… There is no distinction in the Bible between knowing God or Jesus as our "Savior" and knowing him as our "Lord." Saving faith always expresses itself in obedience (James 2:21-24).

Scott Hafemann

The God of Promise and the Life of Faith. Crossway Books, 2001, p. 99.

Our obedience to God's commands is the expression of trusting Christ. It is not our words but our deeds that stand the test of Christ's gaze. Love of Jesus is measured by obedience to what he commands (John 14:15 and 15:14). "He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me" (John 14:21). Not even miracles can substitute for doing what God commands (Matt. 7:22).

Scott Hafemann

The God of Promise and the Life of Faith. Crossway Books, 2001, p. 191.

In many ways, the attitude of obedience is much more vital than the act, because if the attitude is right, the act will naturally follow. But the right action with the wrong attitude is nothing but hypocrisy.

John MacArthur

Successful Christian Parenting, 1998, p. 126.

It's amazing how people can affirm that God is a God of order and absolute precision in everything He does in the natural world, yet believe He unconcerned about the moral world. The scientist in the laboratory operates on the basis that his chemical mixtures are not going to violate a known truth and blow the building to bits. The astronauts who blast off into space count on the absolute immutability and accuracy of scientific laws. If God is a God of law and order in the natural realm, He's not going to say, “Oh, just do your own thing. Believe anything you want.” Such inconsistency is absurd!

John MacArthur

Faith and obedience are inescapably related. There is no saving faith in God apart from obedience to God, and there can be no godly obedience without godly faith.

John MacArthur

Romans 1-8, Moody, 1991, p. 346.

When a believer is in the place of obedience, no matter how severe the storm, he is as safe as if he were at home in his own bed, because the place of security is not the place of proper circumstances or of desirable circumstances. The place of security and safety, for the believer, is the place of obedience to the Lord. They were safe in the midst of a storm in obedience.

John MacArthur

What does it mean to believe in Christ? It means more than accepting and affirming the truth of who He is – God in human flesh – and believing what He says. Real faith results in obedience… True faith is never seen as passive – it is always obedient.

John MacArthur

The Gospel According to Jesus, © John MacArthur, 1988, p. 46, 32.

The cost of obedience is nothing compared to the cost of disobedience.

Author Unknown

Our Daily Bread.

When did the servant have the right to give orders to his master? When did the bondslave have a right to question the commands of his Lord? By what right do you who know Jesus Christ as a personal Savior sit in judgment on the Word of God and the will of God when God demands absolute obedience to it?

J. Dwight Pentecost
Design for Discipleship, Zondervan, p. 44.

The Bible recognizes no faith that does not lead to obedience, nor does it recognize any obedience that does not spring from faith. The two are at opposite sides of the same coin

A.W. Tozer

Leadership, v. 12, n. 4.

Salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred Scriptures... Apart from obedience there can be no salvation, for salvation without obedience is a self-contradictory impossibility.

A.W. Tozer

Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late – and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work. To pray for revival while ignoring the plain precept laid down in Scripture is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.

A.W. Tozer

Our Lord told His disciples that love and obedience were organically united. The final test of love is obedience.

A.W. Tozer

Much sickness – physical, mental, and emotional – surely must come from disobedience. When the soul is confronted with an alternative of right or wrong and chooses to blur the distinction, making excuses for its bewilderment and frustration, it is exposed to infection. Evil is given the opportunity to invade the mind, the spirit, and the body and the sick person goes off to an expert who will diagnose his trouble. Sometimes the patient knows well what his trouble is and for this very reason has not consulted the Lord, fearing what He will say: confess. Turn around. Quit that indulgence. Do not pity yourself. Forgive that person. Pay back what you owe. Apologize. Tell the truth. Deny yourself. Consider the other’s well-being. Lay down your life.

Elisabeth Elliot

Discipline – The Glad Surrender, Revell, 1982, p. 74

We are responsible to obey the will of God, but that we are dependent upon the Holy Spirit for the enabling power to do it.

Jerry Bridges

God is worthy of my loving obedience because of who He is, not because of what He does.

Jerry Bridges

There is no question that obedience to God’s commands prompted by fear or merit-seeking is not true obedience. The only obedience acceptable to God is constrained and impelled by love, because “love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10). God’s law as revealed in His Word prescribes our duty, but love provides the correct motive for obedience. We obey God’s law, not to be loved, but because we are loved in Christ.

Jerry Bridges

Obedience to the revealed will of God is often just as much a step of faith as claiming a promise from God

Jerry Bridges

The daily experience of Christ’s love is linked to our obedience to Him. It is not that His love is conditioned on our obedience. That would be legalism. But our experience of His love is dependent upon our obedience.

Jerry Bridges

Where love is the compelling power, there is no sense of strain or conflict or bondage in doing what is right: the man or woman who is compelled by Jesus’ love and empowered by His Spirit does the will of God from the heart.

F.F. Bruce

Paul – Apostle of the Heart Set Free, Eerdmans, 1977, www.erdmans.com, p. 21

Not only is disinterested morality (doing good “for its own sake”) impossible; it is undesirable. That is, it is unbiblical because it would mean that the better a man became the harder it would be for him to act morally. The closer he came to true goodness the more naturally and happily he would do what is good. A good man in Scripture is not the man who dislikes doing good but toughs it out for the sake of duty. A good man loves kindness (Mic. 6:8) and delights in the law of the Lord (Ps. 1:2) and the will of the Lord (Ps. 40:8). But how shall such a man do an act of kindness disinterestedly? The better the man, the more joy in obedience.

John Piper

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church. 2002, p. 48.

Obedience is the evidence of faith that alone unites us to Christ who is our justifying righteousness.

John Piper

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church. 2002, p. 110.

God's delight in obedience is good news because it means He is praiseworthy and reliable. If He did not delight in obedience, He would be a living contradiction: loving His glory above all things and yet not pleased by the acts that make His glory known. He would be two-faced and double-tongued. His beauty would vanish and with it all our delight! And He would be unreliable because you can't trust a God whose values are so fickle that He exalts Himself one minute and approves of insults the next.

John Piper

The Pleasure of God in Obedience, Sermon, March 29, 1987, www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission

God’s delight in obedience is good news because it shows that God’s grace is a glorious power and not just a flimsy tolerance of sin.

John Piper

The Pleasure of God in Obedience, Sermon, March 29, 1987, www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission

Partial obedience is really only disobedience made to look acceptable.

Bill T. Arnold

1 and 2 Samuel, Zondervan, 2003, p. 220..

Obedience is the only reality. It is faith visible, faith acting, and faith manifest. It is the test of real discipleship among the Lord's people.

J.C. Ryle

The Duties of Parents.

Instant obedience is the only kind of obedience there is; delayed obedience is disobedience.

Thomas a Kempis

Every syllable of every statute, every clause of every commandment that ever proceeded from the mouth of God was divinely designed to bring those who would obey into the greatest imaginable happiness of heart. Don’t swallow God’s law like castor oil. For when you understand His intent, it will be like honey on your lips and sweetness to your soul.

Sam Storms

[Are we] so much in love with Jesus, so utterly enthralled with the transcendent beauties of [our] Savior, so swallowed up in the adequacy of the Son of God in all things that nothing appear[s] so sweet to [us] as obedience to His commands?

Sam Storms

To obey God as though it were a matter of works is to obey out of your own strength with a view to your own merit. To obey God as though it were a matter of faith is to obey out of His own strength with a view to his glory.

Sam Storms
Integrity, November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

God takes pleasure in your obedience because everything He commands is for your good. All of God's commands are like a doctor’s prescription or a physician’s therapy. They may not always be immediately pleasant, but they are intended and designed for your health and happiness. If occasionally there are painful side effects, it is because the disease is so bad that severe medication may be required. God, our spiritual physician, takes pleasure in our obedience to His commands because the doctor really does care whether or not we get well.

Sam Storms
Integrity, November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

Moral guidelines are oppressive and legalistic only to those who still love their sin. For example, the only reason integrity should be a burden to you is if you enjoy being dishonest. Righteous deeds will be bothersome only because you prefer unrighteous ones. Speaking the truth will hurt only because it feels good to lie. Obedience to the righteous commands of God is easy for those whose hearts have been gripped by grace and whose lives are empowered by grace (Dt. 30:11; Mt. 11:29-30; 1 Jn. 5:3).

Sam Storms
Integrity, November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

The reason we resist God’s laws and pursue our own sinful strategies is because we believe that we can do better at securing our happiness than God can.

Sam Storms
Integrity, November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

This commitment to total obedience does not mean a mere negative avoidance of evil practices. It also means positively obeying God’s commands. We cannot say that someone is a true Christian just because he is not a thief, liar, blasphemer, drunkard, sexually immoral, arrogant, cruel or fierce. He also has to be positively God-fearing, humble, respectful, gentle, peaceful, forgiving, merciful and loving. Without these positive qualities, he is not obeying the laws of Christ.

Jonathan Edwards

The best evidence that a Christian desires (loves) something more than he desires (loves) God is his willingness to sin against God either in order to acquire that desire. “If you love Me keep My commandments,” Jesus said (Jn. 14:15).

Lou Priolo

The Complete Husband, Calvary Press, 1999, p. 114, www.calvarypress.com.

Important lessons are given by this alternation of the two ideas of faith and unbelief, obedience and disobedience. Disobedience is the root of unbelief. Unbelief is the mother of further disobedience. Faith is voluntary submission within a person's own power. If faith is not exercised, the true cause lies deeper than all intellectual reasons. It lies in the moral aversion of human will and in the pride of independence, which says, "who is Lord over us? Why should we have to depend on Jesus Christ?" As faith is obedience and submission, so faith breeds obedience, but unbelief leads on to higher-handed rebellion. With dreadful reciprocity of influence, the less one trusts, the more he disobeys; the more he disobeys, the less he trusts.

Alexander Maclaren

The proximate result of obedience to God is inward conformity to the Divine image

Charles Hodge

Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Eerdmans, 1955, p. 206, www.eerdmans.com.

The truth is that, though we were justified by faith alone, the faith that justifies is never alone (it always produces fruit, "good works,"…a transformed life)

J.I. Packer

There is no such thing as genuine knowledge of God that does not show itself in obedience to His Word and will. The person who wants to know God but who has no heart to obey Him will never enter the sacred courts where God reveals Himself to the soul of man. God does not give divine knowledge to those who have no desire to glorify Him.

Sinclair Ferguson

A Heart for God, 1987, p. 10, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.

We must not think that obedience leads to an easier life, nor should we assume that when things fall apart it is always a sign of our specific disobedience – God’s ways with us in the Christian life are usually much more intricate and complex than that!

Sinclair B. Ferguson

Healthy Christian Growth, by Permission of the Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA. 1991, p. 16.

Faith and works are bound up in the same bundle. He that obeys God trusts God; and he that trusts God obeys God. He that is without faith is without works; and he that is without works is without faith.

C.H. Spurgeon

I cannot conceive it possible for anyone truly to receive Christ as Savior and yet not to receive him as Lord. A man who is really saved by grace does not need to be told that he is under solemn obligations to serve Christ. The new life within him tells him that. Instead of regarding it as a burden, he gladly surrenders himself – body, soul, and spirit- to the Lord who has redeemed him, reckoning this to be his reasonable service.

C.H. Spurgeon

If two angels were to receive at the same moment a commission from God, one to go down and rule earth’s grandest empire, the other to go and sweep the streets of its meanest village, it would be a matter of entire indifference to each which service fell to his lot, the post of ruler or the post of scavenger; for the joy of the angels lies only in obedience to God’s will.

E.M. Bounds

The Essentials of Prayer, Baker Book House, 1979, p. 19.

Those that disobey the commandments of God do so foolishly for themselves. Sin is folly, and sinners are the greatest fools.

Matthew Henry

Commentary, 1 Samuel 13:13.

There is no conflict between the gratification of desire and the enhancement of man’s pleasure, on the one hand, and fulfillment of God’s command on the other… The tension that often exists within us between a sense of duty and wholehearted spontaneity is a tension that arises from sin and a disobedient will. No such tension would have invaded the heart of unfallen man. And the operations of saving grace are directed to the end of removing the tension so that there may be, as there was with man at the beginning, the perfect complementation of duty and pleasure, of commandment and love.

John Murray
Principles of Conduct, 1957, p. 39.

Jesus' gospel of forgiveness is not unrelated to the Bible's demand for holiness. Obedience is not a "second step" added to our faith, so that "accepting Jesus as Savior" must be supplemented by "accepting Jesus as Lord." We are not saved by grace and then sanctified (made holy) by our own works. Being a Christian is not a matter of adding our will to God's, our efforts to His. Rather,…"putting away sin," which is faith in action, is the means to persevering, which we do by depending on Jesus from beginning to end. In other words, repenting from the disobedience of disbelief, and the life of persevering faith that this brings about, which entails obeying God, are all one expression of "looking to Jesus." One cannot exist without the other… There is only one thing, not two, that we must do to be saved: trust God with the needs of our lives. This one thing in God's provision (now supremely manifested in Christ) will show itself, from beginning to end, in our many acts of repentance and obedience.

Scott Hafemann

The God of Promise and the Life of Faith. Crossway Books, 2001, pgs. 191-192.

By repenting of our hope in the promises of this world – the greatest of which become merely rusted metal and short-lived pleasures – and trusting in God's promises, we develop a new lifestyle of growing obedience to God, rather than following the cadence of our culture. And as our hope in God increases, our obedience to his commands becomes more consistent.

Scott Hafemann

The God of Promise and the Life of Faith. Crossway Books, 2001, pg. 172.

Obedience is out of vogue in our culture. You can find classes that provide assertiveness training. Try to find classes in submissiveness training! Obedience is the willing submission of one person to the authority of another. It means more than a child doing what he is told. It means doing what he is told; Without Challenge, Without Excuse, and Without Delay.

Tedd Tripp

Shepherding a Child’s Heart, Shepherd Press, 1995, p. 160. Used by Permission.

Obeying when you see the sense in it is not submission; it is agreement. Submission necessarily means doing what you do not wish to do. It is never easy or painless. True biblical submission must be found in knowing Christ and His grace.

Tedd Tripp

Shepherding a Child’s Heart, Shepherd Press, 1995, p. 167. Used by Permission.

What our Lord said about cross-bearing and obedience is not in fine type. It is in bold print on the face of the contract.

Vance Havner

True obedience hath no lead at its heels.

Thomas Adams

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 199.

Sacrifice without obedience is sacrilege.

William Gurnall

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 199.

Greatness in the kingdom of God is measured in terms of obedience.

John Stott

Authentic Christianity. Christianity Today, v. 40, n. 3.

If a commission by an earthly king is considered an honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?

David Livingstone

If I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God.

Oswald Chambers

Love can grow only if it is rooted in the soil of true obedience.

Alexander Strauch

Leading With Love, Lewis and Roth, 2006, p. 184, Used by Permission.

For we do not keep the Law to be saved. But rather, in keeping the Law we show ourselves to already have gained salvation through the cross of Christ. In light of the cross of Christ and the liberation from the (sting) of sin we receive from it, we are now free to keep the Law (Gal. 4:31).

C. Matthew McMahon

What is the Difference between Legalism and Obedience?

The Antinomian heresy is the view that the law of God revealed in the Old Testament has nothing to do with the New Testament church; that the New Testament church is a church without law, a church that lives and breathes exclusively on the basis of grace… But the New Testament is far from abolishing God’s moral law. Jesus calls His disciples to obedience. He says, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15).

R.C. Sproul

The Purpose of God, An Exposition of Ephesians, Christian Focus Publications, 1994, p. 64-65.

[Obedience] is not to be done slavishly, out of servile fear or out of some rigid, stoical desire for rule-keeping, but rather from a profound desire to express our love for the Father.

R.C. Sproul

The Purpose of God, An Exposition of Ephesians, Christian Focus Publications, 1994, p. 123.

Obedience to God is always for our good and His glory.

Author Unknown

The straightest line between me and satisfaction in life is obedience to God.

Author Unknown

In His message of the kingdom, Jesus announced the overwhelming, amazing wonder of God’s sovereign grace reaching down to reclaim sinful people for Himself. But no one emphasized as strongly as Jesus the need for people touched by God’s grace to respond with radical, world-renouncing obedience. Both the gracious initiative of God and the grateful response of human beings are necessary aspects of the gospel.

Douglas Moo
James, Eerdmans, 2000, p. 89.

God’s gracious acceptance of us does not end our obligation to obey Him; it sets it on a new footing. No longer is God’s law a threatening, confining burden. For the will of God now confronts us as a law of liberty [James 1:25] – an obligation we discharge in the joyful knowledge that God has both “liberated” us from the penalty of sin and given us, in His Spirit, the power to obey His will.

Douglas Moo
James, Eerdmans, 2000, p. 117.

Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.

Augustine

If you believe what you like in the gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

Augustine